The Digital Press

AI data-harvesting bots are aggressively scraping content from cultural institutions’ websites, causing slowdowns and threatening public access. These bots, used to train AI models, impose significant costs and technical burdens on galleries, libraries, archives, and museums.

Why it matters: AI bots overwhelm cultural websites with traffic, risking outages and escalating operational costs for institutions providing public access.

The big picture: This surge in bot activity reflects a broader challenge of balancing open digital access with sustainable resource use amid growing AI data demands.

The stakes: Without better controls, cultural organizations may be forced to restrict access or invest heavily in defenses, undermining their public mission.

Commenters say: Users highlight that corporations drive bot traffic, note failures of voluntary bot controls, and suggest metered usage or legal penalties as potential solutions.